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Monday 25 November 2013

Requiem for a Wood-Sprite


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Untitled: photo by Karena Goldfinch, 21 March 2013


"...the happiness, the echoing, endless, irreplaceable happiness..."

from Vladimir Nabokov: The Wood-Sprite (1921)




Marsupial in her palm. Carer with endangered Leadbeter's Possum, faunal emblem of the state of Victoria, rescued from forest fire: photo by RubyGoes, 6 May 2009
 

Leadbeater's possum

There are fears the Leadbeater's Possum, also known as the Fairy Possum, may become extinct within a decade if its habitat is not conserved: photographer unknown, via The Guardian. 2 June 2013
 



If you go down to the woods today... #2: photo by Karena Goldfinch, 12 February 2013


85% of the timber taken from this site was used for paper: photo by Karena Goldfinch, 11 November 2012


Logging at Toolangi State Forest: photo by Karena Goldfinch, 11 November 2012


Logging at Toolangi State Forest: photo by Karena Goldfinch, 11 November 2012


Habitat: photo by Karena Goldfinch, 11 November 2012


The dark side of the hill this morning: photo by Karena Goldfinch, 27 November 2012


Why would you want to turn a tree like this into wood chips?: photo by Karena Goldfinch, 29 March 2012



Untitled: photo by Karena Goldfinch, 13 July 2012


Morning fog: photo by Karena Goldfinch, 29 July 2012



Black forest: photo by Karena Goldfinch, 15 October 2012


Black forest: photo by Karena Goldfinch, 17 October 2012


Black forest: photo by Karena Goldfinch, 17 October 2012


A gallery of tree ferns at the feet of Mountain Ash (Eucalyptus regnans), Tanbryn, Victoria: photo by ccdoh1, 30 November 2009



Otway Mountain Ash (Eucalyptus regnans), Tanbryn, Victoria: photo by ccdoh1, 10 June 2010
 

Untitled: photo by Karena Goldfinch, 21 March 2013
 


Possum. This possum walked past our door this afternoon, probably loves to eat my roses: photo by Karena Goldfinch, 24 March 2008



Toolangi: photo by Karena Goldfinch, 11 November 2012



Requiem: photo by Karena Goldfinch, 27 March 2012


Untitled: photo by Karena Goldfinch, 29 September 2013

8 comments:

TC said...

Video: Dan Harley, Threatened Species Biologist: Leadbeter's Possum: have you ever seen a forest fairy? (a second chance to save an animal that had been considered lost)

The Story of the Little Red Treehouse (Guardian, 14 November 2013)

Hannah Patchett: "I am holding a vigil in a tree house" (Guardian 12 November 2013)

Amendments in state logging laws doom the Leadbeter's Possum (Guardian, 27 June 2013)

Hannah Patchett: notes from the Toolangi Little Red Treehouse

Leadbeter's Possum habitat range map

Help save Leadbeter's Possum, Victoria's endangered state faunal emblem

Prof. David Lindenmeyer: Sending Leadbeter’s Possum down the road to extinction

Nora said...

Those Karena Goldfinch photos are astounding. Poor Leadbeter's Possum. Here's hoping we save it before we have to clone it.

ACravan said...

I've been carrying this around in my head all day long and it's the best thing I've had in my thoughts. Ditto Nora's comment. Curtis

TC said...

When one takes the time to let the information sink in, this story takes on an eerie parabolic quality.

The state of Victoria sold state forest logging rights, with a provision that some share of the dividends go to the people of the state. But the people didn't get the dividends, and the logging goes on anyway, and trees that took two millennia to grow to maturity are being swept away by "clear-felling", and the forests are meanwhile intermittently ravaged by wildfires, and all of this is simply a matter of human intervention -- the trees lost to manufacture toilet paper, the planet overheating due in no small part to the intensive carbon emissions of the Australian coal fired power generating plants; the electricity will go to China, the toilet paper will provide the perfect drafting-tablet upon which to inscribe the willful and negligent destruction of natural habitats.

That in the course of all this the tiny but tough Fairy Possum which lived in those old tree hollows should be extinguished forever as a species is a significant embarrassment for the state of which the animal is used as an emblem.

But of course emblematic status alone never got a threatened creature through the Long Night of the Bipeds.

Nin Andrews said...

People are so creepy and arrogant. I love how we have all these so-called moral principles, like the most obvious, thou shalt not kill, and we go around killing the animals and forests and sea and air and . . .

ACravan said...

Everything else, sum and substance aside, you post all the good pictures. Curtis

TC said...

Many thanks, Nin and Curtis.

It seemed to me this was one of those rare cases where the good principles and the good pictures converged, more or less by accident. The already very good photographer could not help but be outraged at what was happening in her own neighborhood, and decided to try to do something about it, by keeping on taking pictures.

And the pictures got even better for that.

The elegiac and tragic dimensions of the struggle for life to continue on this planet would have to be seen now as the central remaining subject matter of art... as the shades of evening come down.

Unknown said...

Plant Hemp, it grows quicker than trees makes everything trees can produce is renewable yearly and much lower impact on the environment!